Cool! Take some pictures for us. If he likes doing it (and is good), he could drum up a little extra business for himself, no doubt!

I meant to come here and mention on the earlier thread that Ladyslipper Nursery (on Hwy 140 between Roswell and Canton) has 4 bright blue rain barrels out front. They look like they are already "plumbed". I don't know how much they cost, but anyone interested could call them.

The hard part is getting the water out of them.

The ones I bought have a spigot and a hose connector on the bottom, so you can drain the water out or fill up a container to then water somewhere. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

One of the suggestions is to raise up the barrel on bricks or other sturdy structure, to make it easier to put something under the barrel to get the water out and to increase water pressure coming out of the barrel.

You will get enough out by gravity to hand water small areas, container plants etc. If you want to actually run a small drip irrigation system or a sprinkler or two you need a pump. You can connect a pump to those drums with the garden hose fittings. I shouldn't have said it's "tough", because it's just a matter of going to the hardware store and plunking down the money but don't be too upset when even that can't run your sprinkler system.

At one time I was going to use the water in the pond behind the house to water. It was going to cost so much to set that up and the water rates were so low that it made more sense just to use city water. -At that time- Now things have changed and it makes sense to spend a little more to protect this resource. And the pond is dried up anyway so that wouldn't have done a whole lot of good.

Way to go Sharon!
It seems like Advanced Drum has been charging more for their barrels (earlier in the year they were $18!).
I have 6 barrels and no problem getting water out of them. You can configure your barrels to suit your needs. I have a spiggot on the bottom, and the tops removed, altered and screened for dipping buckets in. They have not been dry this summer as I only water parts of the landscape, not all of it. Although the watering of vegetables with this water is not recommended, I do it anyway. There is no other alternative for me to get water to the veggies except from the hose which I haven't done much of at all this summer, I refuse to.
The trick to the rain barrels is to make sure you have enough to suit your needs, and they are an excellent solution to watering problems. If you run an extended link of the barrels (I have them in pairs, but will probably change that to one very long linking of them) a pump works well and can be hooked up to different watering units in different barrels. A sump pump is about $65. You could run an entire watering system for under a $500. That sure beats at $8,000 cistern instillation!

GGG

GGG do you have any pictures of your rain barrels? I am trying to envision your altered topes with screens. Sounds like a good idea, but I don't quite see it. Also I am debating the whole veggie watering thing myself, do you have asphalt shingles or what?

A rough estimate is that one inch of rain on a thousand square feet of roof area would collect 625 gallons of water....more than 12 fifty-gallon barrels.

Some people use heavy duty plastic trash cans to collect rain water runoff. Others use food-grade barrels or containers. (Clean the recycled food containers so you don't breed bacteria from any leftover food particles.)

WalterReeves.com has many articles and variations on homemade rain barrels. Just enter rain barrel into the search box on his site. He has how-to directions with photos.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.walterreeves.com